An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
